More guns less crime. It is the mantra of those who don't really believe in such wacky things as statistics, empirical evidence and common sense.
Some because they have blissfully become the NRA's ever-willing Manchurian Candidates, prisoners of ideology, where facts are uninvited house guests and certainty is superior to truth. Others, because they are known as the NRA leadership, made up of arms dealers and those, like NRA head honcho Wayne LaPierre, who gets paid $1.281 million per year by arms dealers. Not gonna be much wiggle room at that table at The Palm.
But here's the thing. As some visitors to the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, made clear this weekend, they're not all that comfortable with more guns when the guns are going to surround them. See, then it's not safer to have more guns, apparently. Only when they're at your university or openly carried in a shopping mall your kids go to.
When former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is asked about it, he freaks out and sends in the goons. Ditto, Senator and potential presidential candidate John Thune, whose big-government Thune Amendment lost on the Senate floor last year, a defeat for the NRA. Perhaps it was because not every state thinks alcoholics, the blind and domestic abusers should have concealed carry rights. But hey, I'm just guessing here.
Wayne LaPierre just throws the ball in his underling's court, not able to answer for himself it seems. You'd think $1.281 million might buy the ability to articulate a position on things. But then again it's hard to articulate why his organization would sponsor CPAC at a venue that doesn't allow guns if it's so much more dangerous, or why they'd do the same with the NRA's very own convention in 2010.
Someday I'm sure we'll hear from Mr. LaPierre's people-powered wisdom on these matters, but in the meantime, let's go to the videotape, why don't we:
Donald Rumsfeld - The Freak Out
John Thune - The Bob & Weave
Wayne LaPierre - The Mix Up